Veterinarians exempt from new DEA education requirement
A new opioid-related training requirement for DEA-registered practitioners does not apply to veterinarians, despite appearing as a required checkbox on the DEA’s online registration application, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials.
Veterinarians who are registering or renewing their DEA registration should simply check the box on the DEA application, in order to continue on in the registration process, the DEA has advised the AVMA.
The requirement—to complete a one-time, eight-hour training on treating and managing patients with opioid or other substance use disorders—took effect June 27 and applies to all DEA-registered prescribers except veterinarians. Veterinarians were specifically exempted in the federal law that created the requirement, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023.
However, because veterinarians and other medical professionals use the same DEA registration form, veterinarians registering or renewing their registration must check a box on the application that affirms they’ve “read and understood” the information about the training requirement, as shown here:
If you have questions, email the AVMAGRD
avma [dot] org (AVMA’s advocacy team).
Comments
DEA
Why don't they just add a box to check that states the physician is a veterinarian and therefore exempt? Instead they advise us to perjure ourselves on a federal form.
DEA
I have the same concern.
Opioid training vet exemption
So the federal government is asking veterinarians to submit false information on their DEA applications by falsely stating they completed requirements rather than giving an option to say we are exempt? Wow. That makes me queasy.
It’s not perjury to say you…
It’s not perjury to say you have “read and understood” a requirement that doesn’t apply to you.
perjury
It states you can't continue unless you check the box that you understand you are required to do this training. It's an official DOJ form. If you dissent in any way from DOJ or AVMA (the NGO telling you it's safe to check the box) dogma, it could be the noose they will place around your neck, whether it fits your definition of perjury or not. If you trust the DOJ, go right ahead.
Should be an easy fix
It looks like the DEA could fix this problem *very* easily by adding a single line to the excerpt shown here, stating something like "The applicant is a licensed veterinarian, and will be using this registration solely in that capacity." Which makes me wonder why they haven't done so yet. AVMA, can you get someone working on that?
(I do like the fact that the law acknowledges the fact that there are DVM/MD and other such combinations, by only exempting those who are getting the license as "solely veterinarians" instead of just saying veterinarians in general are exempt.)
Act Exemption Page
Exactly where in the Act is this exemption stated? The document appears to be 100’s of pages.
No Change
It has been over a year since this problem has been brought up. Why hasn't anything changed when there are easy solutions available. Isn't this part of what our dues pay for? To lobby against silly rules that can have dire consequences for us.
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